experimenting with layout

Just want to see if I can put things into categories. This is work-related research...

Walking with Dog

I walked down to the water with Maddie a few days ago.

this is just our driveway - we can walk right from here over to the Evergreen woods and beach

For the first time in a long time this fall I've had no dogs at home to take me out on adventures. I still run and get out there but don't walk so much. With friends walking is a lot of talking - which I love too, but I tend to walk without seeing; I can find I've walked for miles and barely seen where I was, other than the stunning mushroom or flower that pops up and commands attention. My head is filled with the conversation, with what I'm going to say next, with how much I can ask my friend to reveal beyond what they have just shared that has intrigued me.

We pass this bog, which 36th Loops around - see the red maple in the distance? Here are few of its leaves.

Running I love too but again am much less sensitive to surroundings. I don't listen as well. Listening is so important and so hard to do, with all the clamor in my brain immediately giving an opinion. I would get a lot less upset at people it I just listened and didn't immediately check what I hear against my bank of facts and find a need to defend or put forth my position. Even in my own head, my own conversations I don't listen. Always putting up other points of view, projecting scenes, how will I say this later, how will I describe this thought I had...

looking left, towards
Mud Bay at bottom of
Eld Inlet
looking right up towards
Puget Sound; a big
madrona tree hangs
over the beach here



Such good places to unthink.

Pausing in the field we cut through gives a nice view of sky

And back on the path that leads to 36th.

Got into documenting patterns - here are a few:

Weekendz

Got a camera - and walked around the yard - that's looking out the bedroom door



Looked at stuff



Everything is beautiful



the tomatillo husks disintegrated leaving their little bodies trapped in lacey balloons






maple leaves fell, but not this paper wasp nest

So

So here I am living in this house. Particularly lonely (but also nice) this weekend while Naomi, Joseph and Noah (1 year old) are back east for a 90th birthday party. Michael and Rebecca have gone out to meet with Roosevelt School folks about a forest garden project. I have let the chickens out, fed them, thought about doing something with the lighting in the coop, returned with two eggs, eaten one with leftover squash and winter-root salad and added the other to some oatmeal-raisin cookies, of which I have already eaten four. Observing how they are going from too soft with molassesy middles to crunchy, just about right yet I am definitely reaching my quota before they have reached perfection.

I look around the house and note that I have very few articles in it. A few cookbooks and a little of the kitchen stuff are my contributions, and a couch and a rocking chair. Other than that the guitars, toys, books, boots, raingear, co-op-ready boxes, pickling projects, knick-knacks and riff-raff are all Dan's or, mostly, other household members'. But this IS my house, I do live here and I am living here - forever? permanently? beyond Hawaii? As a grandma? It's not really real, that. I think I've been renting and transitional for so long now it feels like the permanent status. It's refreshing change from disgruntled suburban this-is-not-my-boring house status. Well, it's not because it was boring that I left, but the effect was refreshing in several ways.

A quick review:
sometime ~1992 - bought Westwood house with Joseph, 3 kids, 1 dog
April '04 - I move out of Westwood into Thomas St with Ariel and Emily
Sept '04 - tried living back at Westwood; by winter of '06 Ariel has moved into apartment with Nick, Emily joined her
May'06- summer sublet on lovely Langridge Av with Em; met Dan; Ariel to Florida
Sept '06- rented house on 17th Street; Em had a bedroom, Jason did but never used, moved Casualtee into garage; Callie (Ariel's first cat) got lost
Sept '07- bought house on 41st Way, moved in with Emily, Buster and Maddie
December '08 - Ariel moved in downstairs with Emma and Hurley (dog kinda and cat)
July 2009 - moved into Dan's; Em to Woods Hole; Ariel and Kyle moved to Steamboat
Sept '09 - Em to Portland with Maddie; A to Tacoma with Emma; rented out 41st Way to TESC students
Oct '09 - Dan and Jason to Hawaii to begin installing power systems and otherwise set up the Farm for longer term life sustainability

... what is next? Rachel moves to Hawaii... grows organic turmeric, discovers it turns silver hair orange.

Ah!

Battery charged, but now I need a memory card! Ahh! So much technology. All this facebooking, texting, emailing, and blogging is just keeping me glued to this screen. At least I will break away for a bit and see some live people acting in a play downtown, yeah! Very very rainy stormy windy outside, even some lightning and thunder today. Goodbye, yellow maple leaves.

Let There Be Pics

In answer to all the clamors from my large fan base (of 3...) as to why I have not posted anything for awhile, it's because I've had no photos, I have had no camera, yet many scenic moments. I couldn't stand it any longer and just purchased a camera, which is now charging, so soon there will be photos (previous photo credits go to Sophie)! Let the illuminated world begin! (It's the dawning of a new age, no less.)

Dan's Temptations

These are pumpkin-squash-coconut-molasses-blueberry pies, and an apple crisp, all gluten free Emily creations (I helped!)


This is the cool gizmo we use to peel, slice and core the apples all with a few cranks of the handle. Plus you get spiral slices :)

Blue Line March

Here are a few pictures from Olympia's Blue Line March downtown for the International Day of Climate Action. We joined with thousands of towns around the world to get festive and creative while taking our passion to the streets (see 350.org for great photos from far-flung places).

The idea was to trace the "new shoreline" that will come about if we don't bring CO2 in the atmosphere back down to 350 ppm (currently around 385, I believe). Actually, downtown Olympia already floods - we get unusually high tides down here at the base of Puget Sound, and town is built on fill, just one foot over high tide. So during an unusually high tide with a big rain storm there are flash floods in town. With sea-level rise, the stormwater drains will back up and we'll have certain areas that just can't drain and become new downtown lakes (not so fun when it's your business in the middle!).



You can see the cool fish hat Em made me in this photo - that's me blocking the "0" on the 350 sign.

Wholesome Household

Em came up from Portland and we've been doing wholesome domestic things. We went and picked the big pumpkin Dan and I have been growing - Dan had been disappointed the pumpkin vine seemed to put out very few fruit but then again, 3 pumpkins that are ... just went outside to weigh it... 28 pounds WITHOUT the guts, well that's not disappointing at all.



Emily saw a mastiff dog with grizzled jowls on the earth-side of the pumpkin, so we drew this face to use the natural features. But we couldn't cut OUT the jowls or we'd lose the texture so we just scraped out the insides to get the effect. Worked pretty well!



While carving we toasted the pumpkin seeds, of which there were many, tossed with grapeseed oil and sea salt and baked until golden and crunchy. Then Em made a gluten-free pumpkin bread just with the chunks of pumpkin taken off for the ears etc., using coconut and rice flour, pecans and carob chips - wow, spectacularly yummy. I went to bed but Em stayed up to put together a costume for me for the Blue Line March, which I'll tell you about in another post (see 350.org, there may even be photos soon of our march downtown today if you look up Olympia - I'm the one who's taught a fish to ride a bicycle).

When I got home we took Maddie for a walk across the street through the beautiful woods with all the big yellow Big Leaf Maple leaves glowing along the path (darn, didn't bring her camera), and I took her for the first time to the enormous granddaddy Douglas Fir deep in the woods - truly a HUGE and special tree. Just a magnitude of order more magnificent than your ordinary trees.

Got home, put the chickens away, made ourselves a fine pizza using all kindsa garden veggies. Michael came in having had a long day planting a forest garden, and later Naomi came home with sleeping Noah having been at a cider pressing party. So you see I'm serious when I say we've had a wholesome day, in a wholesome household, in wholesome ol' Olympia.

Farmer's Market; Harvest Day

Today will be a lot better for the volunteers down at the Market. I helped set up the booth. It was a beautiful morning, sun shining off the wet pavement and booths, vendors setting up their stalls; we're at the end with Sullivans, the apples in huge crates, the pepper wagon with all shapes and sizes, red, yellow, green (is that why the Italian flag is red and green?). The strong girl moving the cart spilled a few peppers - if you ever want a free, hot pepper just go there at 9:55 before the market opens and pick some off the asphalt.

Fantastic pickings at the Calliope farmstand - Jason you would have drooled at the Romanesco - and I got a box of tomatoes to make salsa and sauce from Kirsop, told the guy you got his CSA box in exchange for shirts and he said, why, I'm wearing one right now. At another stand I asked how they keep their arugula from bolting and got the tip to plant it every few weeks, mix potting soil with seed and scatter. We chatted about the tastiness of the spicey flowers of arugula versus the milder broccolirab. I guess for standing and chatting I was rewarded with some free sweet onions for carmelizing and too-small winter squash for soup.

Then went to the Coop to get bulk olive oil and vinegar, which I'll need for the salsa, and saw Evan who wants to get involved in what's going on locally on climate action.

All in all a beautiful Olympia morning - the house smells delicious from the applesauce Naomi's canning; I'm gonna go help start on the sauerkraut from the HUGE cabbages everyone got in their farm boxes (or grew).

(See, if I had a camera I could adorn this post with a colorful picture of the Market!)

Beginners Blog

The best way to start is just to jump in, right? It seems like the best way - wouldn't want to get trapped by overthinking. So I am just starting - without even a burning message to convey.

Other than that now the sun's out - and we should have stuck it out at the Farmer's Market, kept holding down our little blow-away booth, with one hand on the umbrella and the other handing out soggy flyers on climate action events (be part of the Blue Line March next Saturday! Come to the Cool Thurston Cafe on the 27th!). Things, small events, attempts to change the earth. Really the effort felt pathetic and made me angry at the futility - a band of volunteers - moms who's kids are grown is what we were today - when what is needed (as with all causes, of course), is a huge banner across the stage saying Act Now to Divert Catastrophe - 350.com - why does that sound like the New Yorker cartoons of the guys with sandwich boards reading, "The King is Dying, Long Live the King?" or "The End of the Earth is Coming" - don't remember a punchline for that one.

Sometimes it feels so futile, other times... well, it always feels futile, just sometimes a little more rewardingly futile.